


223. a promise

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [139]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 08:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8571088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “They are all out in the desert,” Helena says. “Looking for me. And I heard the soldierboys whisper that you are sick and that there is no need to look out for you when instead there can be drinking, and smoking, and fighting. So. We go. Now.”
“Helena, I can’t walk,” Sarah says. “They – did sommat to me.”
“They did something to me too,” Helena says. Her voice is iron, her gaze is steel. “They did things to me many times. I always ran. You are good at running, Sarah. It is time to go.”





	

When Sarah’s fever breaks she sits up, groggy, to the sight of Helena sitting in the corner of her cell. Her sister is twitching, fingers running up and down the barrel of a pistol with an absentminded franticness. She didn’t have the pistol when she left, when she left Sarah here to die alone.

“Thought you were gone,” Sarah croaks. Her mouth is dry. Her head aches. She remembers the tattered edges of a dream: something about Beth, voices filtering through: _she’ll be fine, get her back to her cell_ , Paul’s voice echoing more and more distant until it was gone. Gone. Everyone gone.

“I thought so,” Helena says quietly, “also. But. I made you a promise.” She looks at Sarah and must read the utter bewilderment in Sarah’s face, so she adds – even softer – “We’ll never be separate.”

“Great,” Sarah says, sitting up with a huff of effort and almost throwing up – well, whatever is left in her stomach. “Now you’re all about that connection again, huh? Where was that when you were bloody _leaving me behind_.”

“You left me first,” Helena says stubbornly; she looks inches from leaping across the room and strangling Sarah. _Again_.

But she inhales, exhales, and somehow refolds the lines of herself into something unthreatening. “They are all out in the desert,” she says. “Looking for me. And I heard the soldierboys whisper that you are sick and that there is no need to look out for you when instead there can be drinking, and smoking, and fighting. So. We go. Now.”

“Helena, I can’t walk,” Sarah says. “They – _did_ sommat to me.”

“They did something to me too,” Helena says. Her voice is iron, her gaze is steel. “They did things to me many times. I always ran. You are good at running, Sarah. It is time to go.”

She stands up, moves the pistol to one hand so she can offer her other to Sarah. “Now,” she says. Her voice is a plea.

Sarah shuts her eyes tight. “Okay,” she says, “fine,” and she takes Helena’s hand.

* * *

The sun is setting red and bloody in the distance. There’s no one out and about in the camp; from some distant corner Sarah can hear cheering. Presumably that’s the drinking, or the smoking, or the fighting. She doesn’t want to think too much about it – about Paul, holding her hand, about the part of her that thought – well. Doesn’t matter. Helena is in front of her, moving light and fast the way only predators do, peering around corners and then ushering Sarah along.

“There is a garage,” she says over her shoulder as she ducks down, presses her body to a wall and inches along it. Sarah apes her, feeling more like an idiot than someone who’s going to make it out of this camp alive. “We can get a car there. If we drive fast, we can be gone before they know.”

“Can you drive?”

Helena flashes her a devil-grin. “I can go _fast_.” She holds eye contact with Sarah for a second longer, and then the grin drops abruptly off her face and shatters. “I’m sorry. That I left. I was – angry. But. You are my _sestra_. Family.”

“Don’t know if I can forgive you,” Sarah says frankly.

Helena’s gaze darts off into the distance. Her jaw shifts and works, but she doesn’t say anything. Finally she sighs. “Okay.”

She peeks around the wall, stands up again, waits until Sarah stands. They keep winding their way through the prison camp towards what will hopefully be the garage. The key to their freedom. Sarah suddenly is hit – _hit_ , violently, a punch to the throat – with a memory of drinking tea with S and Felix. It’s not a specific memory; it might not even be real, they’ve done it so many times before. But she knows how the tea would taste. Her eyes are watering a little bit.

“Sarah?” Helena says, voice tentative. Sarah blinks her eyes clear, rubs at them furtively with her sleeve. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, alright, I’m coming.”

Helena is standing by a metal door with the word GARAGE stenciled on it in black paint. “Is something wrong,” she says.

“Nothing,” Sarah says, and lets out an embarrassed husk of a laugh. “Thinkin’ about tea, sorry. Bloody ridiculous.”

Helena tilts her head to the side. “It’s okay,” she says. “When I was running away I thought about donuts.” She grins – huge and bright, plausibly sincere – before she steps forward and puts the gun into Sarah’s hand, folding Sarah’s finger around the trigger. Her eyes meet Sarah’s steadily, solid and sincere. Then she pulls a piece of metal out of her shoe and starts tenaciously working at picking the lock.

“We’ll get donuts when we get out of here,” Sarah says, briefly looking at the camp on either side, the world’s shittiest lookout. “Haven’t had one in years.”

“I have never had tea,” Helena says absentmindedly. “We can have this. Also.”

“Sounds good,” Sarah says, and she’s shocked to realize she means it. The lock clicks, sharp and easy, like it agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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